However, caution may be in order if like many older folks, you face the need to take blood thinners or you need new ways to “eat green” when diagnosis and/or drugs mean changes in your usual food choices.

For a unique Valentine gift or present for other occasion, Radiant Arts Studios offers objects with colorful X-ray images of sea animals like the spiral nautilus, blue crab or puffer fish embedded into them.

Their book gives the essentials of bread dough, sections devoted to morning baking and evening baking divided by breads and pastries, and one hundred recipes for everything from baguettes to sourdough breads and savory and sweet pastries to crusts.

Root vegetables not only improve our physical well being, but improve our mental health as well due to their high amounts of antioxidants which help remove harmful free radicals and toxins from the body. Free radicals and toxins can leave you feeling sick – physically, emotionally and mentally. (Cabin fever or winter blues come to mind?)

A well-crafted drink…should only be four or five ounces. And it should be consumed right after it’s mixed and served; it needs to be enjoyed while the tiny ice shards are still present and the air bubbles added during shaking are still alive.

*CONTEST WINNER: It seemed to happen suddenly, I turned 50 and then the pounds appeared. It didn't feel like I had changed anything but my age although that “once a month friend,” or should I say foe, was no longer in my life.

Holiday tables offer all sorts of delicious orange-colored goodies. Let's focus today on pumpkins and sweet potatoes and pile on those oranges as well as an ingredient and sweet dessert on their own — all three inexpensive, delicious, nutritious powerhouses.